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0 tonight on "crossfire", the president and his obama care team are on an apology tour. >> i want to go in and fix it myself, but i don't write code. >> why can some politicians admit they were wrong -- >> i take full responsibility for my own access. >> how profoundly sorry i am. >> while others can't. on the left, stephanie cutter. on the right kevin madden. in the crossfire, ruth marcus, and grover norquist, who opposes it. is apologizing shrewd politics? or just sorry? tonight on "crossfire." welcome to "crossfire." i'm kevin madden on the right itches i'm stephanie cutter on the left. we have two great guests in the crossfire tonight, gull first let's talk about the president's apology. he's sorry because some americans are losing their insurance plans, and they're costing more. he did promise if you liked your plan, you could keep it, admittedly i've used that line, too, and there's no doubt the administration oversold it, but there are some facts that could be ignored. we are talking about roughly 3% of americans who could be paying more, and their old plans aren't even worth the paper they're printed on. let's not overlook the fact a president can admit a wrong, apologize for it and actually fix it. it's not often in this town that you see that. kevin, we can all learn a lesson from that. >> i would agree. i think the lesson is don't mislead the american people. >> all right. in the crossfire tonight "the washington post" columnist ruth marcus, and antitax crusader grover norquist. kevin, you're the guest host, so why don't you ask the first question. >> so kind. isn't this an apology of the last resort? at first he denied there was even a problem. then he goes out and attacks his critics. then when only there's no other options left does he apologize? >> i think i'm going to surprise you and maybe grover and maybe stephanie and say, yes, i think you're right. i am a supporter of obama care, but i don't think this has been well handled. i think that's putting it very mildly. the president set something he knew or should have known or probably knew it wasn't exactly accurate. everybody repeated it. we're culpable in the press, because we let him get away with it. if you look at the hhs was projecting back a few months after the law was passed that a lot of people in this individual market -- you're totally right, stephanie, it's a small piece of the market, were going to lose their coverage. they were going to have to buy new plans in the marketplaces. so the president knew that. his first reaction was, i didn't say it, or i said it, with this caveat, and you all failed to hear it correctly -- >> that's one of the -- >> and now it's a limited apology. he's not saying he misled us. he's -- >> and we're seeing that outrage, but are we seeing enough -- >> have you been listening to white house briefings? >> this was a bill that was sold on a false premise to the american public. >> we are talking about a very small -- for most americans, they are keeping thafr current health care plan, and this is a better deal, for the american people who have to change plans, they're getting a better deal. there's no deception here. the bottom line is that it was a talkling point that got out of the control. there was a rule and regulation we passed right after obama cause was signed into law that was heavily covered by the media, and debated by republicans. there was a heavy conversation. there was legislation to try to overturn it. if you had a health care plan before march 23rd, you could keep it. if you had a health care plan after that, it could be subject to change, but those are details i totally understand this has gotten out of control and gotten away from the president, but grover, the president's apology is more than we've gotten in the past. some presidents don't know how to apologize. i want you to watch this >> your words, no one more sickened or angry than i was when we didn't find weapons of mass destruction. you still have a sickening feeling. >> i do. i do. >> was there any consideration of apologizing to the american people? >> i mean apologizing would basically say the decision was a wrong decision, and i don't believe it was the wrong decision. >> so let's give credit where credit is due. the president apologized. that's something that other presidents weren't able to do. even though el potion the law and are a critic of the president, can you -- >> i'm not sure i heard an apology form. the whole way this worked was to force people. he says the plans weren't any good, they were subparse. that's not his job. >> that's the law that was passed. >> but the point was is the american people should be able to decide what kind of car or insurance they want. he doesn't get to come in -- >> but he does, grover. that's the law. >> yes, it's a law, which he passed, which was a lie from what he said. >> it was upheld by the supreme court. >> two things. it was passed all with democrat votes. who cares whether the president lied in this case. he got elected saying he wouldn't raise taxes on anyone in any ways who earned less than $250,000. it took him 16 days to break the promise and did it eight times in obama care. he's not apologized for that lie, which he ran millions of ads about. so he's not in the business of telling the truth when he needs to. at the hasn't agreed to fix this. he says, no, no, no. >> let's talk about the legislation on the table to fix it. it doesn't fix the problem. it basically allows anybody to buy a plan that's a raw deal. >> that they want. that they want. >> grover, i think you make -- >> that's the difference. you choose and you do what you want. other people want to run their lives for me. >> i think the analogy that you get to buy the car you want is exactly right. that's not precisely true. you may del grass, but the government says the cards needs to meet certain safety standards. they have to have air bags. they have to have seat belts -- >> and the fuel mileage standard. >> we don't get into a discussion about that -- >> yes, we do. >> as with other safety standards and other standards for acreal reporting, consumer predictions, minimal coverage, so stephanie's exactly right, so these insurance plans are real insurance plans that provide people with a minimum set of benefits set by the state. >> set by the state. >> my father was a mechanic. when a car's transmission was broken, we didn't. >> i nudes i shouldn't have brought up a car analogy. >> we didn't pour a quart of oil in the engine. we few it was fundamentally broken. obama care is fundamentally broken. >> in what way? >> it's not working right now. >> well, how do you know? >> don't you think it's time we scrap the whole law, start over and start reform in the right way? >> no. no. absolutely not. >> you want to pour a quart of oil in the engine. >> but i'm not going i'm going to leave the mechanical stuff to others. here's the thing. is the with ebb site fundamentally broken? yes. is the roll-out a debacle? yes. has the administration failed to anticipate, as they absolutely should have? 9 large number of people who are finding that they're grandfathering is not very effective? is it not included? yes, but where is the fundamentally failure there if many people will get insurance that is better insurance that costs them less with subsidies than they would have had absent obama care. >> it's not being implemented. >> you haven't seen how it -- >> you can judge it be recallity, whether the american people were to do what to do, or you can do it by the president's own words. the president said he wouldn't raise anyone's taxes unless they made at least $250,000 a year. include the ones that wasn't a tax when he put it in. don't you want to talk about health care and not taxes. >> also, he promised he would drop people's premiums. they're going up in many cases. >> in some cases they're going up. >> they were supposed to go down for everything. >> because they take money from some and subsidize it. >> i do want to remind you that this is a law passed by congress -- >> by democrats. >> one republican in louisiana voted for it. >> unfortunately republicans politically chose not to support this, even though it was based largely on republican ideas. >> no, no, no. romney -- romney did this in massachusetts. telephones held together by the supreme court you baffles because it was attacked. >> and this was heavily debated. >> they all support it now. >> there's a lot of daylight in this law. there's nothing secret going on here. >> there's 3,000 pages, they promised they would put it up for everybody to look at -- >> we're going to go to break and continue this after the break. kevin, over here, thinks the president should be spending more time negotiating with republicans. when we get back, i'll mind him there's actually no one to negotiate with. 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